Sunday, 28 July 2013

The 1814 campaign has presented me with the most difficult
wargame I have ever had to organise.

Both the French and British commanders write orders for
their four corps based on incomplete information supplied by me.The map above shows the position of
each corps at the end of the previous day.They are aware of any enemy corps within two squares (10 miles).

The previous day was a battle between 1st British
and 7th French corps.

The British won, with light casualties and one of
their five brigades in rout

The French lost, have orders to avoid the enemy for 24 hours
and have suffered medium casualties and have three of their five brigades in
rout.

3rd corps were ordered to rest and resupply. 2nd corps was ordered to attack
into I04.

You will see that the British orders do not really make a
lot of sense.The weakest corps, 1st corps, is
ordered to attack.2nd corps
is ordered to attack on their own.3rd
corps are ordered to rest.4th
corps are sent east instead of north.

Under the terms of the campaign Jan and I take command as
soon as a battle/wargame is declared.All
corps on, or within supporting distance, of the table come under our
control.We can change the orders for
each corps as soon as their turn comes on the table.

First I had to decide which parts of the campaign combat was
worth fighting as a wargame.

If one side is outnumbered two to one I calculate casualties
as a paper exercise.1st
British corps would have come into this category.2nd British corps is one to one,
so that would be fought as a wargame.

I decided instead to fight a large battle involving all
eight corps and covering two wargame tables.

I then had to decide whether 19th corps should
remain with 17th corps, as the latter would face odds of two to one
at Cambo.I decided that the French
player wanted to have odds of two to one at St Jean, and he would not have done
so had I cancelled 19th corps orders.

It took a whole morning of working on the orders and maps to
decide how best to tackle the battle.We have set up the first wargame, the left hand square on the map
above.In the very first move we have
had a huge upset when one body of cavalry charged and routed the enemy cavalry,
blocking the column behind.

If the remainder of the two battles work as well it will
have been well worth the effort of setting it all up.

Sunday, 21 July 2013

There have been a lot of questions raised about the campaign
in general, which has kept me busy.The
campaign rules are more of an outline and reference rather than a full detailed
set of campaign rules.More like the
“fast play rules” than the full rule book. So it is not surprising that new players
raise a lot of questions.It’s good for
me, because when I refer to the rules it’s often the first time I have done so
since I wrote them, and I see them in a new light.

The battles resulting from the campaign have also been much
different from previous campaigns.This
is probably because I no longer influence the strategy of the campaign in the
role of CinC.Some players are obviously
struggling to master the finer points of the rules, and strategy is taking a
back seat.

As a result there have been a large proportion of uneven
battles.That is to say odds of two, or
more, corps to one.These are not
usually planned as a clever strategy, but the result of one side having their
four corps too widely spread and not within supporting distance of each other.

The problem is that they make for very one sided
wargames.All of the corps are evenly
balanced in terms of numbers of infantry, cavalry and artillery.But also in fighting ability.Some may have better firing, others better
skirmish others longer range artillery.So when you get odds of two to one the smaller side is almost certainly
going to lose.

Given that the smaller side has usually ended in this
circumstance as a lack of planning on the part of the player, it seems unfair
to throw away one of his four corps in a very one sided battle.

So I have always allowed the weaker side to start to
withdraw as soon as it becomes obvious that he is outnumbered two to one.This is usually about move five, when the
second corps arrives at the table edge three or four moves away.

The attacker can attempt to pin the defender by attacking immediately,
and not waiting for his reinforcements to arrive.But the only real way to pin is to have
superior cavalry, and that can only be achieved by winning the cavalry
melee.If the attacker loses the melee
it is almost impossible for him to pin the weaker side.

This problem has caused a flurry of correspondence on the
campaign forum.One player has
suggested, very reasonably, that it should be possible for the leading corps to
pin the weaker corps until his reinforcements arrive.This certainly was possible in Napoleonic
warfare.But it is very hard to achieve
in a wargame, unless the weaker side is not allowed to retreat with the result
that he will be destroyed.

I have to find a solution which does not end in the
destruction of the weaker side.Otherwise the campaign will quickly disintergrate as one side after
another loses one of their four corps and then faces the knock on effect of
uneven combat.

Sunday, 14 July 2013

The purpose of my PBEM campaign is to produce wargames for
Jan and I to fight, and it has not let us down.

We have completed three campaign days and they have produced
three battles for us to wargame.

We hoped to achieve one campaign day per week, and have
managed to keep to that target.Not bad
going as there are twelve sets of orders to process each campaign day, six maps
to update and twelve sets of reports to send back to the players.

In addition we have had to fight a wargame for each week,
and also managed to complete them on time.

To be fair they were not very complicated wargames.

Most of the army commanders are struggling with the new
campaign system, which puts a lot more decision making on their shoulders.Some are very cautious, some very rash.The battles have been produced by the
latter.

Battle of Strasbourg

All were one corps against one corps.On the wargames table this translates to 32
infantry, four cavalry and one gun.It
is not long before one side starts to lose the battle, and it then becomes a
pretty one sided wargame.So we have
managed to complete each wargame in less than the full twelve moves.

Next weekend our son arrives with his family for their
annual two weeks in the sun.The
grandchildren are 6 and 3.So I doubt
we will have much time for wargame campaigns and fighting battles.They take over the house and we try to keep
out of the way, whilst preparing meals and performing nightly babysitting
duties.

We do have the occasional break when they all go off to the
beach for the day.Usually we just flop
with a cup of coffee, or watch an hour’s TV.But we might just get in an hour’s Wargaming or spend an hour updating
the campaign.

It’s lovely when they come, but it’s quite nice when they go
home as well!

Sunday, 7 July 2013

The administration of the new campaign is proving much more
time consuming than I had anticipated.

My previous series of PBEM campaign had developed over a
period of four years, each phase learning lessons from the previous one. But the basic campaign remained
unchanged.Six to eight players each
commanding a corps and all playing on the same tactical map.I took the role of commander in chief for
both the French and Allied armies.So I
could keep the campaign on track and direct the flow of the action.

This one has twelve players, each an army commander with
four corps each.There are six
campaign areas each with one commander per side.Each has its own strategic and tactical
map.They each have complete freedom of
choice as to how they conduct their campaign.

It’s very early days yet, the campaign is only two weeks
old.

We have completed the initial deployment and also the first
complete campaign move.

The previous campaign had run on a strict weekly timetable. It had to do so because I had to have all of
the orders in before I could start to plot that day’s move.

I had hoped that in this campaign I could spread the work
over a longer period.All I need is the
orders from one set of commanders, the French and Allied commanders in one of
the six campaign areas.I should not be
surprised that the first six orders I received all came from different campaign
areas!

Already the timetable is becoming staggered.As soon as I get one “set” of orders in I
start work on the umpire report.This
consists of a map, order of battle and current supply situation.That is similar to the previous umpire
report, and can be completed quite quickly.I have added a summary of the current orders to this page, so that I can
more easily compare the orders from each commander.

Then I complete a summary of each corps, what they have done
and what contact with the enemy.I also
write recommendations, which the player can follow or not as they wish.I had thought this would add interest to the
campaign.I am not sure how the players
feel about it, but I am coming to think I may have “bitten off more than I can
chew”.It is very time consuming and requires
a lot of cross reference to put it all together.

So another very busy week, and a very challenging one.I am sure that it will get easier once I get
the flow of it going smoothly.Or at
least I hope so.

No one to blame but myself.I could have carried on with the old system.But I was getting bored it.I can confirm that I have not found the past
week boring.